Shards of Light and Colour
by I Took the One Less Travelled
Summary: Harry is an empath. AU. Eventual H/G.


The first time that he realizes that feeling other people's emotions isn't normal, he is five years old. Dudley is spoilt and vengeful and possessive, and Harry is _his_, and Dudley just doesn't know how to handle it. He gets to keep and play with and break and do whatever he wants to with his other toys, and Harry is _his_. Harry knows this. Harry has always known this.

Uncle Vernon is angry and scared and hostile, and the fear just waves off of him. Harry doesn't understand what Uncle Vernon is so afraid of, but he avoids him anyway, because that fear just hurts and stinks and makes Uncle Vernon angry instead.

Aunt Petunia, in contrast, is a little bit scared, but mostly just guilty. Where Dudley is possessive and Uncle Vernon is scared, and Dudley grabs and pulls and hits, and Uncle Vernon yells and avoids, Aunt Petunia just stares at him with these hopeless, pleading eyes. Whenever her eyes catch Harry's, she looks away.

Harry asks Dudley, one day when he is five, if he doesn't know that Dudley is Harry's too. He knows that Uncle Vernon fears him, and Aunt Petunia feels guilty, but Dudley loves him—even if he doesn't know how to treat someone that he loves, Harry has never once doubted his cousin's love for him. Dudley fills with pain, hatred, fear and uncertainty, and Harry realizes that maybe Dudley _can't_ feel what he does. Maybe no one does.

Then he and Dudley start school, and the mess of emotion on that first day—painfearangerabandonment—that fills up the classroom makes Harry choke on its headiness, and he clings to Dudley's familiar possessiveness. Nobody is allowed to get close to _his_ cousin, and he starts hitting people to make sure that they don't. Harry avoids Dudley, because his friends are all a mess of smugworshipfulspoiltstupid, and they make Harry's head hurt. Their spoilt is different than Dudley's spoilt, somehow, but he doesn't know how. Still, though, he carefully phrases questions to everyone that he gets a chance to, and gets himself a bit of a reputation as 'weird outcast', but he confirms what he had already thought—no one else can do what he can.

School is a miserable mess, partially because Dudley's possessiveness is farther away, now, and he's resorted to hitting Harry to make him stay close, and hitting other people to prevent them from befriending him and taking him away. Harry is bad at tests as soon as everyone is old enough to realize what a _test_ is, and it starts making them all sweat and fear and crushing, distracting, and his teachers think that maybe he is ADHD, or he has an approval problem, and the school counselor has a new theory every week.

Harry doesn't tell them the truth.

Then it is Dudley's eleventh birthday, and his cousin (his cousin that, even though he can feel his love, he has come to hate because Dudley hits him and attacks him and _loves_ him, and doesn't know how to love another human being because his parents never really taught him how except that love involved a lot of smothering on his own part, and a lot of yelling on Harry's. Uncle Vernon doesn't love Harry, and Aunt Petunia's little bit of love is always overpowered by her guilt, but Dudley loves him and he can't comprehend the fact that his parents don't, so the way that he treats Harry is some kind of strange hybrid crossover between the way that his parents treat him, and the way that they treat Harry and the way that he is allowed to treat his toys) gets almost attacked by a snake (not really, because Harry can feel the snake's emotions too, and hear its voice, and it isn't going to attack anyone—it's just having a little bit of fun) and is really, really afraid, and Harry gets tossed into the cupboard under the stairs and Uncle Vernon tells Dudley that Dursley men don't cry, and snaps at him when he has bad dreams. Aunt Petunia hugs him too tightly and talks to him like he's three, and Harry gets woken up in the early hours of the morning by his cousin cramming his overlarge size into the cupboard and onto Harry's cot.

Harry knows that Dudley is too afraid to sleep on his own, and he won't leave and if Harry tries to make him, Harry won't get any sleep either, so Harry lets him stay there until he hears Uncle Vernon get up at five-thirty. Then, in the window between Uncle Vernon being gone and Aunt Petunia waking up to get her son and nephew ready for school, he coaxes/orders his cousin back to his own bed.

One thing that Harry's been noticing at school is that he is drawn to pain and fear and anger. They hurt, too, and they're really distracting when there's a lot of them, but he's drawn to people who feel them, and sometimes he spends lunch and recess sitting next to complete strangers who are sometimes even way older than him, but they mope around a bit and their pain and anger starts to disappear after being around Harry.

It takes him until he's ten to figure out that he's absorbing those emotions into himself, instead of just sitting there. He's making it better. After that, he makes it his mission to find people that are hurting and try to fix them, and as long as he doesn't try to make friends with them while he's at it, they don't usually leave in fear of Dudley. Dudley, for his part, doesn't usually hit people for allowing him to sit with them at lunch unless it starts to happen too often.

Then the letters start, and Uncle Vernon starts being more afraid again, like he was when weird stuff happens around Harry and like he always was when Harry was really, really little. Aunt Petunia is afraid, too, but it is a more complicated kind of afraid. She's guilty and she starts to smell like the same kind of possessiveness that's always rolling off of Dudley, and also a kind of determination that Harry's never felt on anyone before. She starts refusing to let him leave the house—it's always ostensibly because there's some ridiculous chore that they should be hiring someone to do instead of forcing on a ten year old, like clearing out the gutters and re-shingling the roof, that needs to be done _right now_, and doesn't he remember that he has to earn his keep?—but she has this fear and possessive protectiveness rolling off of her whenever Harry brings up the idea that he might leave her sight, so he rolls his eyes and stays close, if only to save himself from the burden of that cloying fear.

The letters keep coming, and Uncle Vernon keeps getting more afraid and Aunt Petunia gets more protective and Dudley is the same as ever except that he's gotten more clingy too, just because he's reacting to his parents' absurd behaviour.

Finally they run away, and Uncle Vernon is full of this weird triumph that fades away every time a new letter finds them in a new place, and Aunt Petunia is this mess of apprehensiveguiltyterrified, and being around his aunt and uncle is so exhausting that he starts spending time with Dudley instead, even though Dudley spends a lot of time whining about missing his computer and his favourite television shows.

Also, his birthday is tomorrow, and no one but him seems to have noticed. His aunt loves him from a distance, almost like she loves something else that he reminds her of instead of him, and his uncle one dimensionally fears him, and Dudley loves him a lot but thinks of him as a possession instead of a person, and birthdays are not something that occur to any of them.

Then a giant man that radiates welcome and kindness bursts into the hut on a rock in the middle of the ocean and tells him that he's a wizard, and Harry thinks that that explains _everything_. It must. It must explain why he can feel these things, and it certainly explains why Uncle Vernon is so afraid of him. He's sure that it helps explain Aunt Petunia's guilt and pain and fear and protectiveness, especially when it happens to slip out that his parents were murdered. Dudley doesn't know, but once Harry gets back from school shopping, Dudley's behaviour towards him changes—his aunt and uncle don't really change, but his aunt is more afraid and protective, and she stages loud conversations with his uncle about how _dangerous_ wizards are, and the magical world and how there are _maniacs_ in it, and how she wouldn't be part of it if someone paid her. And if people with magic knew what was good for them, they'd give it up entirely and pretend that it didn't exist. Uncle Vernon tries to shush her every time the word magic comes out of her mouth, as if it is some kind of utterly foul swearword.

In contrast, Dudley learns that Harry is leaving and just gets more clingy. It doesn't make sense, because Dudley was going to Smeltings anyway, and wasn't going to see Harry until Christmas, but his cousin's fear and possessiveness is utterly ridiculous and overpowering, and Harry doesn't know what to do besides let Dudley follow him around, and the stupid morons that follow Dudley around just follow in turn. It gets frustrating after awhile, especially when Piers decides that Harry makes a good target again (approximately three times an hour), and Malcolm and Dennis decide that other children that are much younger and smaller than them need to be relieved of their summer ice cream money.

He wanders the neighborhood that summer, wordlessly trailed by his very messed up cousin and in turn trailed by said messed up cousin's friends, contemplating how wonderful it will be to be around people like him, people who can understand what it is like to feel the waves coming off of everyone else.

Then, on September the first, he begs a ride to the train station from his aunt and uncle, who are taking Dudley to a plastic surgeon to get his pig's tail removed before he goes away to Smeltings. Harry maliciously thinks that he'd really love to be a fly on the wall when they explain _that_ to the doctor, but he stops the thought. Dudley might be too rough, and he might be annoying, but he loves his cousin. If he couldn't feel what he feels, he probably wouldn't—but how can someone _not_ love a person that loves them so much? His aunt and uncle may have deserved the fear that Hagrid dumped on them by giving Dudley that pig's tail, but Dudley did not.

As Harry his getting out of the car, Dudley grabs him around the back and gives him a weird headlock-hug-thing, and Harry can feel Dudley's desperation and sadness. It is the first time that he consciously reaches out to ease someone's emotional pain, but Dudley lets go of him with a weirdly peaceful expression on his face. Uncle Vernon is filled with a mix of that overpowering fear and a feeling of petty triumph as he mocks Harry and leaves him alone in the train station, surrounded by all of the reliefanxietypainanticipationboredomlovedesperatio nloss that fills King's Cross, and Harry's head spins. He never has liked big crowds, and since his aunt never really took him anywhere, he's never gotten a chance to get used to them, either. At least in Diagon Alley, the emotions were mostly awe, and when it's just one emotion it's a lot easier to filter.

Still, though, he forces his concentration on trying to find the platform and get on the train when he is rescued by a woman who he would absolutely love to cling to until the end of time, because she's just so utterly _beautiful_. She's full of lovecompassiondesperationhappiness, and Harry takes a moment to bask in her positive presence—overpowering the lesser emotions of the four boys and one girl surrounding her. Finally, though, he asks her about how to get onto the platform, feeling out the boys and girl as well.

The oldest boy, called Percy, is full of ambition and disapproval, and Harry is instantly worried that this boy is going to break his beautiful mother's heart when that ambition overpowers his love for his family. It's obvious that the family isn't really well-off, based on frayed clothing and beat up luggage, and Harry knows that Percy disapproves of that family situation. That he would leave it (and the people attached to it) behind in a heartbeat.

Fred and George, twins, are full of goofy mischief and laughter, and the desire to make others laugh. They warm him, too, and Harry decides that some of the woman's beauty must have rubbed off on most of her family, even if it seems to have passed over Percy.

Ron, who is actually introduced to him, is the most complex of the lot. Ron is full of anxiety and jealousy and this poisonous sense of inadequacy, probably not made better by the twins' constant barbs in his direction—Harry can tell that they're constant, by the way that they make Ron shrivel up every time one of them pokes at him. The twins don't mean to be malicious, but Ron's identity as the youngest and most unimpressive of six brothers makes him overly sensitive to any kind of teasing from someone that he'd give anything to impress.

Ginny, the girl, is one year younger than him—she's not actually going to Hogwarts, just seeing her brothers off this year. She is embarrassed to meet him, but happy and cheerful and full of the same sort of warmth that covers her mother, but not of the nurturing quality. Where the mother is clearly born to be a mother, Ginny is full of adventure, and she wants to run and play and damn well _grow up_, because she, like Ron, is tired of being left behind by all of her brothers. She doesn't want to have to learn to cook from her mother because she's _the girl_, and while her mother loves her to pieces, she also despairs that Ginny doesn't want to hang around her mother and learn to cook and sew—instead, she wants to steal the boys' brooms and teach herself to fly (even though her mother has declared her too young and delicate—which isn't _fair_, because the boys were allowed to start learning at five, and Ginny is ten now and her mother still won't let her, because she's too small and Quidditch isn't ladylike), and run around and play in the mud. Like Ron, she is insecure because of the differences between her and her brothers, and she's always been a little bit apart from them—she's lived in a very full house, and been surrounded by love all her life, but Harry realizes that her brothers treat her a bit like Dudley treats him—a possession, a toy, a doll to be cosseted and protected, but not a real person with real feelings. When the boys do things wrong, they have to degnome the garden or mow the lawn, but when Ginny does things wrong, she has to do the dishes and the laundry.

Harry snaps out of Ginny's eyes, and realizes that the woman and Ron are both watching them, alarmed. Harry's alarmed, too—it usually takes him awhile of knowing a person to get those kind of specifics. With all of the others, he just got basic emotional temperature. With Ginny, he got her entire life story.

Ginny reaches forward, and flushing slightly, she squeezes his hand. "It's okay," she says. "I don't like you just because you're Harry Potter." And that was one of his fears—that everyone would like him because he's Harry Potter. After he felt everyone's awe in Diagon Alley, he thought that it was a pretty legitimate one.

"I don't like you just because you're the pretty girl in a room full of boys," Harry's mouth says without his permission, and Ginny grins happily. Harry grins too, and then he realizes that he never even introduced himself to anyone, and how could she know about his fears? She's made the same realization, because her brown eyes start to widen, and so do his, and _she's like him_. He knew that there had to be someone, but after Diagon Alley, he had given up hope that all witches and wizards can do this.

Harry tugs away from her, making eye contact with her mother, whose name he knows is Molly Weasley, and quietly asks again how to get onto the platform. He and Ginny were whispering when they were talking to each other, so he knows that Ron and Mrs. Weasley didn't hear them, just saw them squeeze hands.

Mrs. Weasley tells him, and Harry obeys her instructions. Then he waits on the side of the crowded platform, avoiding the crushing emotion and hoping to see Ginny again. It isn't long before they come through, and Ginny spots him standing to the side. While Mrs. Weasley and Ron quickly connect back up with the twins, Ginny manages to slide her hand from her mother's grip and come to his side. They don't have much time, just enough to promise to write, and that warm golden glow of her reaching for his emotions smacks into him. He returns the favour, doing what he did to make Dudley let go of him earlier—consciously reaching out. Something in him feels like its tangling with something in her, and they both giggle like they're much, much younger than they are. Then her mother has realized that Ginny is gone and is calling for her, and Ginny giggles at him again and runs back to her mother's side. The twins help him get his trunk into a compartment on the train, and realize that he's Harry Potter.

At first, Harry only puts up with Ron (who is eager and in awe and intimidated by Harry doing things that he can't remember) because Ron is Ginny's brother. He realizes that it's kind of mean, especially since Ron has spent his entire life with people feigning interest in him because of his brothers, but he can't help himself. Ginny fascinates him, and now that Ginny's out of feeling range, he only has secondhand information to go on. Eventually, Ron's awe fades away when he realizes that Harry's a totally normal boy—except for the fact that he can feel other people's emotions, but he doesn't tell Ron about that. And either he doesn't know it about Ginny, either, or he knows and it's a family secret, because it never comes up in conversation—and he suddenly grows into a far more appealing friend. It also becomes clear that he _needs_ Harry, because Ron has utterly crushing inadequacy issues. Harry's always been drawn to people that need him.

Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom are two other people that he meets on the train. Hermione is smart—too smart. He can't tell 'smart' as an emotion, but from what he can tell from experience, smart people are logical, analytical and mature. Their emotions aren't as powerful as their intellect, and the sense that Harry gets from them is dulled. He doesn't find an _absence_ of emotion in Hermione, more the sense that emotion is easily dismissed in favour of logic. People like this can be dangerous, and Harry resolves to watch this dulled emotion carefully. Neville is afraid. Of everything. He, like Ron, Ginny and Hermione (who fears being unable to live up to her intellect), he feels inadequate, feels like he will be unable to live up to the position that his life has placed him in. Harry feels the stirrings of iron-strong bravery and courage, and compassion that could keep the world turning. Neville Longbottom will be a hero one day, Harry is sure. He knows it as surely as he knows that the sun will rise.

They arrive at school and are herded into the feast. The fear and anxiety of the students around him range from his own type of fear—the crushing 'I'm not good enough for this school, they'll realize that I don't belong here and send me home', to the kind that's rolling off of Draco Malfoy—the kind of fear that makes Harry not be as rude as he could be when he turns down Draco's very unpleasant offer of friendship. Fear that he'll _fail_ something—what, Harry isn't clear on until the house system becomes more clear to him. When Ron confesses that his entire family has been in Gryffindor, Harry gets it—Draco isn't like Harry, worried that he won't get sorted at all, Draco is worried that he'll somehow fail his family by not getting sorted into the house that they've been in for generations. Draco is worried that he'll prove himself unworthy of carrying the family name.

The hat finds him fascinating, and Harry takes the opportunity to interrogate it about his abilities. It turns out that it is uncommon, even in the wizarding world, and even more interesting is that it isn't a magical affinity. Muggles are just as likely to have this ability—the hat calls it 'empathy' –as wizards are, and it isn't connected to his magic at all. Harry is just relieved to have his conclusions on meeting Ginny confirmed—that even if it's rare, it isn't completely unheard of. He isn't a complete freak.

Because of his abilities, the hat contemplates Hufflepuff, and because of the cunning nature that he often used to hang around people who needed him without noticing and the fact that Harry is determined to prove that his fame isn't the only thing about him that matters, it contemplates Slytherin. Finally, though, it settles on Gryffindor, and the only place that it doesn't seriously talk about is Ravenclaw—only quickly addresses, and then dismisses the House of Wit.

The Gryffindor table is cheering for him more loudly than all of the other kids' cheers combined, and he feels the awe and jealousy, and the hatred of complete strangers that comes with being a hero as a toddler. Harry sighs, but joins his new classmates. He sits near Neville, who needs him like Ron needs him, and Hermione, who needs to be watched carefully should she ever decide to do terrible things and take over the world. Not that he thinks that she would—Hermione is a good person, just too smart and analytical for her own good.

The feast finishes. Harry is shocked by the strength of the emotion that blasts from the greasy-haired professor, above all of the other currents in the room when their eyes lock. Painguilthatredloveangerloss twisting and turning in a malevolent kind of _fondness_—before their gazes break, and Harry shakes off the weird feeling.

They go to classes. Learn that magic is more than just waving a wand and getting whatever you want. Go on adventures. Encounter the three-headed dog in the third floor corridor, which is _interesting_, since each of the heads has a different base emotional current. Of course they're all vicious and bloodthirsty and want to eat the tasty morsels that have wandered into their reach, but beyond that... different. Weird.

When he and Ron go to warn Hermione about the troll, he feels her fear from down the corridor—powerful enough that he knows that she needs rescuing. Ron still thinks that Hermione is probably fine, so he's dragging his feet, but Harry knows differently, bursting into the room and entirely unsurprised to find a large greenish-brownish creature growling and snarling and smashing things. Hermione is crouched against the wall, all of that ridiculous intellect and maturity gone in an overwhelming wave of fearpainrunfight_relief_, because Harry's here and he's Harry Potter, and even if he hasn't shown it yet, he must have _some_ ability that everyone else doesn't.

Harry's only getting as clear of an image that he's getting because Hermione's fear is so strong, but he knows that they have to do something, have to distract the troll so that Hermione can get away. But even when it turns because Ron is throwing pipes at it, she's still paralyzed against the back wall. So Harry jumps on the troll's back, and his wand goes up its nose _gross_, and it roars. The troll is afraid, too. Afraid and angry and vengeful, and Ron smashes it with its own club, and Harry stumbles away as it drops him.

The teachers arrive in a flurry, McGonagall full of angry relief, and Snape full of angry guilt and Quirrell strangely empty of emotion at all. They go back to their common room, and Hermione's relief and strength and sudden bravery attack Harry head on, and somehow, they're friends now. He writes Ginny about this the next day, since he's been writing Ginny nearly every single day, and Ginny writes back that she can't wait to meet Hermione next year.

In their letters, he and Ginny never talk about their abilities, just their lives. He loves how he only has to write a couple of sentences about something—like the way that everyone admires him, or Snape hates him for no reason even though he really doesn't—and Ginny knows exactly how he feels about that or how it affects him, and she knows exactly what to write to diffuse whatever issues are filling him. In turn, when Ginny complains that her mother is seriously trying to teach her to sew, now that 'those pesky boys are all out of the way', Harry knows what that makes her feel. Mrs. Weasley would only ever say such a thing fondly, of course, but Ginny is frustrated that her mother is behaving like Ginny's general dislike of feminine pursuits and desire to run around outside and play was always sparked by her desire to fit in with her brothers, and now that they aren't around to lead her on a merry chase, she clearly has no reason to want those things anymore. Without Ron around to distract her, Ginny's got all of Mrs. Weasley's focus on her, and all of her mother's intense desire to make a proper lady, capable of cooking and cleaning and running a house, out of her. Laughingly, Harry promises Ginny that if they ever get married, he'll do all the cooking and cleaning, and she can clear out the gutters and re-shingle the roof, since he's had his fill of those types of chores with the Dursleys, anyway. When Aunt Petunia taught him how to help her cook, so that she had an assistant to chop vegetables and stir things, he usually enjoyed it.

He worries over the sentence until Ginny's reply comes the next morning, simply telling him that she'll hold him to that.

His first Quidditch match is exciting, but he's also really worried about his abilities. The stadium will be _full_ of students, all of them a raging mess of excitement and anticipation, and Harry's expected to actually balance on a broom and chase a little gold ball with wings? He would be doubting his ability to stay conscious and focused if he were just going to be sitting in the crowd. Harry compensates for this worry in three ways: by writing to Ginny about how nervous he is (though he still isn't explicitly mentioning their shared talents in case her parents read her letters every so often. She reads between the lines and knows what he's talking about anyway), hurling himself headfirst into crowded situations (dragging Ron and Hermione to breakfast and dinner at the most crowded times, where before he usually woke up at the crack of dawn so that he could eat breakfast in a mostly-empty Great Hall, and dragging his feet after classes so that some of the crowd has filtered out during dinner) as often as possible to get himself more acclimatised, and by practicing so often that even _Oliver Wood_ thinks that he's being fanatical.

Still, though, when he's sitting in the locker rooms by the Quidditch pitch, he can feel the emotions of all of the students filing into the stands crushing through the walls and feels a bit woozy. His teammates think that he's nervous about the game, and Fred and George try to distract him with cheap pranks and pushing each other off the benches until Oliver yells at them to quit messing around and goes over their plays one more time. Harry's role consists entirely of 'hover above the pitch looking for the snitch and keeping an eye on Slytherin's Seeker. If you see it, catch it. If it looks like Higgs has seen it, chase him and catch it first.' From Harry's understanding of the game, Seekers often play a much larger role than that, distracting the other team's plays, barrelling through Chaser formations and the like. He gently reaches towards Oliver, even though trying to focus through this din of emotion is like trying to tune a radio when its' antennae is knocked off balance, and tries to sort through the Gryffindor Captain's feelings. Oliver is ambitious and desperate to prove himself a capable captain. He's worried and nervous, but he also trusts his team, too. He's young, and aware of it—Harry gets this from some of his apprehension. The Gryffindor team this year not only has a Seeker that's in first year, but a Captain that's in fifth, two third year Beaters and two third year Chasers, and a second year Chaser to cap it off. Their team is very young. The Slytherin team is made up entirely of fifth, sixth and seventh years, and just the size differential is intimidating.

They get herded onto the field, Harry feeling Oliver's anxiousness the whole way, and he pushes back the emotions as soon as he gets into the air. The funny thing is that he was really worried about being able to concentrate on flying, but now that he's there, the emotions just sort of recede into the background. He can still feel them at the distance, but they've moved back and away the same as the roaring of the crowd. Quieter and less overwhelming.

At least until his broom starts bucking underneath him. Hermione and Ron (who he spends the most time with, so he's the most familiar with) have pinned him with their fear all the way across the stadium, and he frantically tries to get his cursed broomstick under control enough to at least fall towards Fred and George (who are hovering below him, hoping to catch him if he slips off)

He can feel Hermione's revelation. He doesn't know what that revelation is, but Hermione has revelations like actual lightbulb moments, and it makes him want to go to a muggle hardware store and buy an actual lightbulb to hold over her head like some sort of cartoon whenever she gets that feeling that she's realized something, had an idea or put together the pieces of a puzzle that she's just been _missing _and it's totally fascinating.

Except for right now, when the only revelation that Harry cares about is getting off of his broom without splatting on the Quidditch Pitch, and unless Hermione's idea covers that, he's kind of uninterested.

Of course, then his broom stops bucking, followed by Hermione's triumph, and he decides that he loves her forever.

This 'forever love' lasts until approximately partway through the walk to Hagrid's, when Hermione and Ron reveal their brilliant idea that _Snape_ is the person that tried to kill him. Which, given Snape's behaviour towards him, he could totally understand why they thought that, except that he can feel Snape's emotions. There are many, many feelings there, but none of them are actually homicidal. Snape is protective of him, in fact. Almost disturbingly protective of him, given his attitude, and the tangle of hatred and pain and guilt. So Harry might overreact a bit. Like, yelling. And informing them both that they're completely crazy, and that Snape would _never_ try to kill him. He gets a bit passionate about it, really, and even Hagrid (who has been vehemently arguing along with Harry that Snape would never try to kill him) is staring at him in shock.

Ron looks confused. Hermione starts interrogating him about his childhood, muttering about abuse and the psychological effects that it can have on the way that people form relationships.

Harry starts yelling that he'll prove them wrong and storms out, leaving Ron and Hermione blinking in confusion. Harry realizes that he's gotten sort of protective over Snape in turn. It's hard not to get attached to someone when you can feel how much they care about you. He realizes that he was overreacting, and goes back inside and apologizes, but tells them that there's no way that Snape's trying to kill him.

Then they hit partial pay dirt when he and Hermione manage to wrangle the name Nicholas Flamel out of Hagrid, but Harry knows that they're not getting any more out of him, because Hagrid goes sharp and clammy and _terrified_, like he knows that Harry's not going to leave this alone and he's worried that Harry will get himself killed. For his part, Harry does his best to reassure him that he'll be careful without giving anything away before following Ron and Hermione out of the hut.

They're still looking for Nicholas Flamel by Christmas when Hermione goes home. Ron is staying, since his parents and Ginny are going to Romania to visit Charlie (Harry knew that before Ron did, since Ginny told him as soon as she found out. Charlie is Ginny's second favourite brother, after Bill, probably because Bill and Charlie are the oldest, and old enough that by the time that Ginny was trying to play with her brothers, they were at Hogwarts most of the time, and even when they weren't, too mature to try to exclude her like the twins and Ron did. Percy never played at all.) Ron doesn't want to do anymore research, and Harry can feel his mingled sense of dejection because he thought that trying to find out what was behind the trapdoor would be an adventure, and triumph because even though _he _hasn't found anything yet, Hermione hasn't either so it probably isn't a shortcoming on his part.

Hermione is just taking the library's so far lack of ability to give them information as a personal affront, and she's getting more and more fanatical about it. Harry's glad that she's leaving for break, because if he spent the entire school break looking for Nicholas Flamel, he wouldn't even care about the answer anymore.

He gets an invisibility cloak for Christmas, and like any object that's been around a long time and meant a lot to a lot of people, it radiates the emotions of its past owners. There's desperation and love and longing and pain, inquisitive curiosity and desperation. It hits Harry that some of these emotions belong to his father, and then he buries his face in the fabric and inhales it until Ron calls him back to earth.

He uses the cloak that night. And after he finds the mirror, the night after that. Four nights in a row, in fact, until Dumbledore shows up. Dumbledore is an enigma of pain and guilt and determination and protectiveness, and when he tells Harry about the consequences of being around the mirror, he's being entirely truthful. Then he lies when he tells Harry that he wants a pair of socks, but whatever he wants is much more serious than that.

When they finally find Flamel, Hermione curses herself for being so stupid, and Harry curses himself for not going through his chocolate frog cards, because they could have figured it out a lot sooner. Ron and Hermione are still stuck on the idea that Snape is trying to steal the stone, and Harry can't explain why that's not possible unless he wants to tell them about his abilities. He doesn't. It isn't that he doesn't trust them, but it's still such an important secret and he has no idea how they'd react. Hermione would probably do a bunch of research. Ron probably wouldn't really care, but still. And there's also the fear that they'll be angry with him, because he's been spying on their emotions all year without them knowing, and that might be seen as a breach of trust.

Hagrid has a dragon egg in his hut. Hermione is appalled. Ron is in awe. Harry is just irritated, because Hagrid lives in a _wooden house_, and dragon breeding is illegal in the UK and dragons are vicious and untameable fire breathing beasts, and he knows that Hagrid isn't actually stupid, and he knows that because of Hagrid's size he can take more damage than most people, but still, this obsession with every creature that can rip him in half is getting ridiculous.

The dragon hatches. Hagrid names it Norbert. Norbert bites Ron, and in return, Ron's antipathy towards Norbert goes through the roof. Hermione fusses over Ron and makes him go to the hospital wing, and Harry can feel her absolute thrill over _having_ someone to fuss over, someone who she cares enough about to fuss over, and someone who cares enough in return to fuss back.

He resolves that if he's ever hurt or sick, even if it's annoying, he'll let Hermione fuss. Hermione enjoys it too much not to.

He and Hermione meet Charlie's friends atop the Astronomy Tower, give over the dragon, and Harry is promptly overwhelmed with the high from Hermione's relief. She _hated_ that dragon, hated that they were involved in something so dangerous and illegal. Hated that they had promised not to tell anyone, and hated that Harry was too noble to break his promise. Hated that it had hurt Ron, that it could've hurt Harry or her next. Hated that Hagrid was their friend, so of course they couldn't tell anyone, even though she really, really didn't want for it to be their problem.

Hermione might be more open to breaking the rules now that she's friends with Harry and Ron, but Harry can tell that it'll always be hard for her. High as he is on her current emotions, he can see flashes of something deeper, something that says that the rules and adults were always there to protect her when the other kids were mean to her, and it's hard to go against people that have always been her allies, and hard to flout measures that always helped and protected her.

High as he is on Hermione, he isn't surprised that he doesn't notice Flich's creeping malevolence until it's almost too late. He grabs Hermione by the arm and tugs her behind a suit of armour in a dark corner, and Hermione's emotions change in an instant, like a flash of ice down both of their backs. She looks at him, horror that he can feel reflected on her face. Her underlying confusion makes him curse Norbert until the end of time, because if Ron was here with him instead of Hermione, Ron would never question how he had noticed Filch, who can (and was) skulking more quietly than his cat. He managed to feel Filch before he would ever have been able to hear him, and the gears of Hermione's too smart, too logical brain are starting to turn under the surface, starting to process something that he's never told anyone, that no one knows except Ginny.

He knows that it's only a matter of time until she figures it out, and he resolves to be far more careful about how he uses his talents in front of her, and how he lets that show in the way that he acts and talks. Too much insight into a person can be his downfall, especially now that Hermione is suspicious.

They wait until Filch goes by, muttering about lying students (Malfoy must've tipped him off again, he realizes, when McGonagall caught him earlier), and they sneak back up the tower as soon as he's gone, too worried about the prospect of getting back to the common room without his cloak. Once they've got it back on, they're far more quiet and manage to make it back without being caught.

Then, three minutes after they get in, the portrait opens again as Harry and Hermione are crouched in the good chairs by the fire, the ones that First Years rarely get, quietly whispering about the trapdoor and Nicholas Flamel. Filch is there, and they throw themselves to the ground to avoid being caught. Not that it's actually against the rules to be out of bed and in the common room—they're considered adults, and they're allowed to stay up as late as they want to. Especially since tomorrow's Sunday, anyway.

But Filch doesn't come inside—just shoves Neville in and lets the portrait close, and Neville is terrified and broken and twisted. He's worried and ashamed of himself, and Harry and Hermione both stand up and call him.

Neville is relieved when he sees them all right, and babbles about how he was worried because he overheard Malfoy saying that they were going out after curfew, and that he was going to get them caught. Also, Malfoy was saying something about a dragon, and Harry and Hermione wince—because rumours about _that_ aspect of their particular adventure are the last thing that they need. Neville came after them. He and Hermione exchange horrified looks, because obviously Neville had gotten caught and is in very deep trouble for trying to warn them.

"You got caught," Hermione says. Harry shoots her a glare, because _obviously_. Hermione rolls her eyes back, and Harry reaches out in an attempt to soothe Neville's rioting emotions. He isn't very practiced at it—his presence does tend to soothe people in emotional turmoil, but actually consciously interfering in their emotions is something that's made him uncomfortable, so he doesn't actually try to do it very often.

Neville calms, though, and sits down in the third chair by the embers of the dying fire. He explains more clearly now that he's calm, that Malfoy knew that they were going to be out after curfew and he had to warn them. Because, of course, of the letter from Charlie in the book that Malfoy took from Ron. Neville goes on to say that Malfoy was completely sure about the dragon, but it didn't seem like McGonagall and Filch thought that he was right—it seems like they were more convinced that Harry and Hermione had been spreading stories on purpose to get Malfoy caught out after curfew and they accidentally got Neville tangled up in the mess.

Harry falls all over himself assuring Neville that that isn't what happened, that Malfoy borrowed a book from Ron and there was a letter from Ron's brother, Charlie, who works on a dragon preserve in Romania in it, and Malfoy must've completely misunderstood something that Charlie wrote about dragons.

Fifty points will certainly set Gryffindor back, but Harry and Hermione both overheard Malfoy getting caught on their way up the Astronomy Tower, and they know that she took twenty from Slytherin. They apologize to Neville, wincing and feeling guilty the whole way that he was dragged into their mess, and finally they all go to bed.

Then the find themselves being pulled out of breakfast to be lectured by McGonagall for their rumors the next day, and Harry tries his story on her, and at least manages to stop her from taking points—but she _does_ assign them detentions, to be scheduled at a later date.

Hermione is in shock, because she's probably never gotten detention in her life, and this time, she didn't even get _caught_ doing anything against the rules. She starts to protest, but Harry realized that McGonagall's in the sort of mood where she'll start stripping off points with a whip if they push her, so he grabs his friend's elbow and drags her out of the office. They find their way into the Great Hall right in the middle of busy time, and Harry has to breathe through the emotions. Hermione had started getting used to waking up really early to go to breakfast early with him, because he told her that he didn't like crowds, and mornings were nice anyway, and it was nice to have some time between breakfast and their first class to get things figured out.

He manages to fumble through it, though, and nobody is happy that Gryffindor lost fifty points, but they're okay. Neville is just a stupid first year, after all, and they can make up for it by winning their last couple of Quidditch matches and getting a lot of answers in classes.

Of course, then a couple of weeks later, after Ron is out of the hospital wing and Harry and Hermione have almost completely forgotten about it under the mess of schoolwork and upcoming exams and Hermione freaking out, because obviously she isn't super-smart and couldn't get a pretty decent mark without studying at all (Harry rolls his eyes), they (along with Neville and Malfoy, they assume) get notes to inform them that their detentions are going to take place tonight. At nine o'clock. Harry is instantly suspicious. They were in trouble for being out of bounds after hours, and the solution is to have them out after hours again? Something just doesn't seem right.

Then in Transfiguration, McGonagall won't look at any of them, and she's worried and on edge—keyed up. She feels almost guilty, too, and out of control.

It makes Harry nervous.

And, sure enough, they leave Ron in the common room at quarter to nine and walk with Neville down to the entrance hall, where Filch is waiting. To contrast McGonagall's feelings, Filch (who, as far as Harry can tell, is a petty and sadistic little man) is gleeful and happy, and that just instantly makes Harry more suspicious. Filch's glee is rolling off of him in such a way that it's making Neville nervous, even though Neville can't feel it.

Sure enough, their detention involves tromping around the Forbidden Forest (get it, _forbidden_? Like nobody's supposed to go there—especially not be _ordered_ in there by teachers as a punishment?) with Hagrid (okay, not really much of a punishment), looking for an injured unicorn. Of course, the fact that this comes with an added risk of also running into whatever in there is both evil enough and fast/powerful enough to catch and kill a unicorn _clearly_ doesn't occur to Hagrid, because he really doesn't seem at all concerned. He also doesn't seem to understand that there are dangers to the forest—ordinary, everyday dangers that are the reason that students aren't usually allowed in there. Hagrid's confusion over Draco's protest and Neville's obvious terror is palpable, and Harry refrains from rolling his eyes.

If this is their detention, they'd better get to doing it. And then, well, sue him if he hopes that Malfoy actually follows up on his threat and writes to his father about this, because his father's on the board of governors (as he keeps whining about as they're going towards the forest), and maybe Malfoy's father will actually do something to prevent such dangerous detentions from taking place.

Because clearly, Harry is the only one who is looking at this objectively. Even Hermione is too busy being worried to realize that there's something going on here—this cannot possibly be the sort of detention that they normally send a bunch of eleven year olds who were caught out after curfew on. It's too dangerous, and McGonagall's reaction during the day says several things: this isn't normal, it's not safe, and she doesn't agree with it. Which, of course, means that Dumbledore must be involved. But why would Dumbledore be sending a bunch of eleven year olds into the forbidden forest to catch a unicorn killer in the middle of the night? Doesn't Dumbledore have _better_ things to do than that? It was like the thing with the third floor corridor—what the heck kind of school _was this_?

Draco is terrified. Neville is shaking. Harry and Hermione are both mostly fine, but Hermione is still on edge. Hagrid is happily oblivious to both the danger and the strangeness of the situation. And the centaurs... ooo-boy. That's a doozy, that one. The centaurs—Bane is _angry_. So very angry. Angry with the world and angry with Hagrid. Angry at wizards and at children and at whatever's in here killing unicorns—because such evil repulses even Bane, Harry can tell. Ronan is less angry, but mostly just loyal to Bane, and Firenze looks at Harry like he sees a saviour, and he feels awe.

It makes Harry shift uncomfortably, but then the Ronan says that Mars is bright tonight and all three of them wander off, and Hagrid takes charge of looking for the unicorn. Hermione seems to have caught on about how _weird_ this entire situation is, and she looks like she wants to rip into Hagrid for suggesting that they split up—that he's actually going to send a couple of eleven year olds (that hate each other, because he seems hell bent on actually allowing Malfoy to take off with Fang, and all three of them hate Malfoy) to wander the forbidden forest at night with nothing but his coward of a dog to keep them safe.

Predictably, Malfoy jumps out from behind a tree at Neville, Neville sends up red sparks and suddenly Harry is stuck dealing with Malfoy's spoilt bravado. Until they find a dying unicorn, and this whole thing just got that much more dangerous, because whatever is killing them isn't done yet. The complete malevolence that rockets off of the crouched, hooded figure is staggering, and Harry stumbles backwards, stomach twisting. Painangerhatreddeathrage_desire_ roll into him, and he actually throws up against a tree before falling down. Malfoy and Fang both bolted when they saw the thing, and Harry's scar is on _fire_, and his senses are reeling because who or whatever this thing is, it is _evil_. So very evil and wrong and he's choking and sweating.

The last threads of the unicorn—because he thinks that it's dying, because its emotions are weak—reach out to him, twirling, tendriling, and that complete force of love and goodness and purity and compassion twines its way into his body, giving him enough energy scramble to his feet and move away from the thing (Voldemort—it must be Voldemort, because nothing else could possibly be this evil, could it?)

Then Firenze is there, hooves pounding, and the thing slithers away, too startled to do anything. Firenze tries to pull Harry onto his back, but Harry shoves the centaur's hands away and hurls himself at the dying unicorn—such a beautiful creature. His fingers twist in the white mane, stained with silver blood, and he pushes back. He can still feel it, it is still alive—if barely, and he forces emotion and energy into the unicorn, taking the _good_ that it gave him, and giving it all of the good that it inspired in him in turn.

Firenze stands behind him, watching with pity and awe, as Harry forces the unicorn from the brink of death. Finally, the unicorn's threads become more than just threads, and Harry's woozy and weak.

"That's enough," Firenze orders, reaching down to pull him away from the stirring unicorn by his elbow. "It is still fatally injured, and you cannot heal injuries. You'll just end up killing yourself to give energy to a creature that wouldn't survive anyway."

"Can it—"

"It needs Hagrid," Firenze answers. "Hagrid can fix it, if he gets here quickly enough. Emotion is your strength, Harry Potter. Not physical healing."

Hagrid comes barrelling into the clearing on cue, brandishing his crossbow, Hermione and Neville on his heels. Harry feels Malfoy and Fang stopping at the edge of the clearing, too terrified to come back in. Hagrid's hands settle on his shoulders, and he thanks Firenze for finding him. Harry tells him that the unicorn is alive, but really hurt, and Hagrid rushes to the creature's side and bandages it up as Hermione fusses over him and Malfoy shoots him uncomfortable looks.

He focuses on Malfoy, ripping past Hermione's worry and fear and relief, and realizes that Malfoy feels _guilty_ for losing himself to fear, for running away from that evil, malevolent _thing_ and not realizing that Harry wasn't following.

That is the moment when Harry decides that Malfoy is Draco, at least in his head.

Hagrid gathers the injured unicorn in his arms, cradling it with such care that a person might think it were regularly a fragile, broken thing, and leads his cadre of terrified first years out of the forest, Firenze stalking along protectively behind them. Finally, they reach the outskirts, and Hagrid carries the creature into his hut and roughly orders them back to the entrance hall to meet Filch and be escorted to their common rooms. Harry can feel that Firenze lingered, though—can feel that the centaur wants to speak with him. He waves Hermione away and turns back to the trees.

"Do you know what the creature was, Harry Potter?"

"Voldemort," Harry answers. "Nothing else could be that evil."

"And you can feel that evil," Firenze murmurs. "Do you know why he would kill a unicorn? Why bother? The creatures are no threat, no danger. Why exert the effort?"

"I don't know," Harry says, shocked that he hasn't questioned exactly that yet.

"The blood of a unicorn will save you if you are an inch from death," Firenze explains. "But you will live a half life. A cursed life—punishment for removing something so pure from the world so that you may live."

"But how could that_ ever_ be worth it?" Harry demands, horror and exhaustion taking their toll. He felt the purity, the goodness of the unicorn. Even dying, it tried to defend him against evil, nearly gave him all that it had left.

"You don't even consider the punishment," Firenze says, chuckling. "You just think of the horror of killing something so beautiful. Humans that are able to gaze upon the true beauty of such a creature are rare. How do you feel, Harry Potter?"

"Awed," Harry answers. "At peace. Tired, but strong in a way that I've never felt before."

"Tell me, do you know what is up in that school right now as we speak?"

"The Philosopher's Stone," Harry realizes aloud, all of the pieces clicking together in his brain. "Whoever's trying to steal it—because someone is, someone tried to steal it from Gringotts, but Hagrid got there first, and then it's under a trapdoor and any number of other defenses—is trying to steal it so that Voldemort can use it to come back into power. Of course."

"Remember, Harry Potter," Firenze orders. Harry shakes his head. Remember what? Voldemort? The unicorn? What is he supposed to remember? "Mars is bright tonight," Firenze finishes pointedly.

Brow furrowed in confusion, Harry wishes Firenze a good night and follows Hermione and Neville, who lingered near Hagrid's house, back up to the castle. It isn't until the next night that he's able to tell them everything that he put together, without mentioning the unicorn and how he saved it.

Of course they proceed to jump back onto the Snape bandwagon, which isn't helping anything, but Harry just lets them think it, lets them stare at Snape with unsubtle hatred, and tries to figure out who's really going to steal it. Obviously not Dumbledore, because of reasons, and also obviously not McGonagall. He doesn't think that Voldemort would recruit any student younger than sixth or seventh year, but if a kid would be useful he might go there. The problem is that with the way that Draco reacted to him last night, it's unlikely that any of his peers would be capable of actually bearing his presence without collapsing in terror.

With that in mind, he turns his eyes to the teachers. He doesn't know all of them—he doesn't have any of the advanced subjects, because he doesn't get to choose those until third year. When he made the Quidditch team, he inadvertently tested out of Madame Hooch's class without even realizing that he had. He's only got Astronomy (and therefore Sinistra) once a week on Wednesday nights.

The thing is, though, none of the teachers that he comes into contact with have any weird or suspicious emotions. Except Quirrell. Quirrell is this really unusual _blank_ spot on his senses, and has been for so long that he's mostly stopped noticing it, but now he figures that that's actually really suspicious. If anything, Quirrell should be perpetually afraid of everything, given the stuttering and the jumping and shaking and ducking at shadows. But he's just... _nothing_.

Still, though, there's nothing that he can do. Even if Quirrell is the evil person that's supporting Voldemort, there's not anything he can do about it now. And he can't tell Ron and Hermione that he suspects Quirrell, because they'd laugh him out of the common room unless he could tell them why. And he's just not ready for that—it feels so private, and he isn't sure that he'll _ever_ be ready for it.

When Dumbledore leaves the castle and Harry puts the pieces together—realizing that Hagrid must've told the stranger that so happily provided him with an illegal dragon egg how to get past Fluffy, and now that stranger knows how to get to the Stone. Since Dumbledore's gone...

He's finally figured out what Firenze was telling him. Mars is bright tonight: war is coming.

They go into the trapdoor. The Devil's Snare nearly kills them, but thanks to Hermione, they manage. The keys nearly skewer him, but catching small flying things is kind of his expertise. The troll comes next, but it's passed out already. They play the chess game, and Ron sacrifices himself, but he and Hermione make it through. Then Snape's potions. By the time Hermione has figured out which potion does what and escaped away, Harry's suspicion is through the roof. Suddenly, he knows why Dumbledore sent them on that detention. Because that was _way_ too easy, and also all of those obstacles were tailor-made for he and his friends and their skills.

So Dumbledore manipulated him here. He's quite potentially in a huge amount of danger, and for what—a test? See, the thing is, like with Snape, Harry can hate Dumbledore's actions, but he can't fault his motives. Dumbledore did this with the best of intentions. He knows this, especially as he walks through the fire and finds Quirrell on the other side, pacing back and forth in front of the Mirror of Erised.

All of it. Specifically designed for this moment—this moment where Harry will get the Stone when Quirrell can't. Either Dumbledore is watching this whole thing, ready to step in just in case, or the Stone is a fake and there's some way to take care of Quirrell without using complicated magic or dying. Something special about _him_, Harry Potter. Something that allowed him to defeat the most evil wizard in the world when he was a toddler, with nothing more than a rebounded spell.

Trying to put the pieces together, he paces around the back of the room quietly, waiting for Quirrell to notice him. When he finally does, the true horror happens when he unwinds the turban, and he realizes what's happened. The reason that Quirrell is so blank is because Quirrell is gone. He seems to have a somewhat autonomous thought, but anything that he thinks or feels or does is... empty. Voldemort's malevolence waves around him, and he starts waxing poetic about his plan and how Harry defeated him, but only temporarily, and how he can bring his parents back if he joins him. The evil rolling off of him prevents him from believing for even a second that Voldemort is telling the truth. He gets shoved in front of the mirror and told to get the stone out, and somehow it works. Now he's just got to lie about it. He's completely despairing over what, exactly Dumbledore wants him to do with this when he brushes his fingers against Quirrell's arm when Quirrell starts manhandling him about, and suddenly he realizes, and before he can stop himself, he reaches up to grab Quirrell's face.

Quirrell literally starts dissolving under his fingers, and Harry can feel himself weakening when Dumbledore sweeps into the room and pulls what's left of Quirrell off of him. He's fairly certain that he's delirious, and if he couldn't feel Dumbledore's relief and pain and guilt and pride, he wouldn't know that the man had arrived at all.

See? Faulty actions, but perfectly sound and good intentions. How can you blame someone who's playing the long game—the long game that might be what it takes to end a war? Voldemort isn't dead, and if Dumbledore's goal is to kill him, how can Harry hate him for that? Maybe Dumbledore put him in danger—tonight, and in the forest—but can a person honestly say that the entire world should be put at risk for the safety of an eleven year old boy?

When he wakes up in the hospital wing, he demands answers. He might be a piece in Dumbledore's game, but he has no intention of being an ignorant one. He flatly reveals his abilities, and an insight that he _knows_ is far beyond his age group—an insight that only someone that's used to seeing and processing the patterns that come with different emotions and reactions could possibly have.

Dumbledore hedges, but Harry keeps pushing. "Professor Snape—why was he so obsessed with keeping me safe?" he demanded.

"Oh? I thought that you might think him responsible? Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger certainly did, when they found me in the entrance hall."

"I couldn't talk Ron and Hermione out of it," Harry explains. "But I know that he wasn't doing anything bad."

"Professor Snape was at school with your father," Dumbledore explains. "They hated each other. Quite vehemently, actually—much like yourself and Mr. Malfoy. But once, your father did something that Severus could never forgive. He saved his life. Severus thought that by keeping you safe this year, he could finally pay back the life debt that he owed your father."

Harry just raised an eyebrow. "No."

"Excuse me, Harry?"

"No. You have treated me like your own personal chess piece this entire year—and I understand that your intentions are good, I know that you have your own reasons, but I will not be lied to. Snape... he feels _far_ too much for me for it to possibly be an old debt to my father. I've never felt anything like it—well, maybe a bit like Aunt Petunia. Snape is this knot of anger and guilt and pain and love, but distant love—like he doesn't love me, but someone that I remind him of. And if you say that he and my father hated each other, then it must be my mother. I'm told that I have her eyes."

Dumbledore stares at him in flabbergasted shock.

"The hat called it empathy," Harry says helpfully. "All I know is that I've felt what other people are feeling my entire life, and I've only ever met one other person like me."

"That isn't a magical talent," Dumbledore protests.

"That's what the hat said," Harry says. "An incredibly rare... what did he call it? Sensitivity. One that appears in muggles as often as it appears in magicals."

"May I ask who..."

"Ron's sister," Harry explains. "Ginny. I met her at the train station last year before Hogwarts."

"That explains the letters," Dumbledore mutters.

"Have you been reading my mail?" Harry demands.

"Not reading," Dumbledore assures him quickly. "Of course not. At least none of your outgoing mail. We've been monitoring your mail for years, Harry. You're a celebrity, and you get heaps of fan mail every year. Some of it is dangerous, and I honestly don't think that you want to read fan mail from strangers, anyway. But you had written to the girl first, and she was your best friend's sister, so I let her letters through. Aside from a few letters to your cousin and some to Hagrid, you only ever corresponded with her. But that is... incredibly interesting."

"I may be a piece in your games, professor, but I refuse to be an ignorant one," Harry snaps, dragging Dumbledore's attention back to the issue. "I want to know why you've been manipulating me the entire year. I want to know why Voldemort tried to kill me when I was a baby. I want you to tell me that the stone in there was a fake. I want you to either put a leash on Snape get him to treat me like another student, or I want you to explain why he's perfectly justified in bullying an eleven year old orphan who has no memories of the parents that seem to offend the man so. I can understand Snape's emotions, professor, but I won't have him failing my work when I don't deserve it, or taking points for getting the right answer because I delivered it with _cheek_. And I want you to swear to tell no one about my little talent, _or_ about Ginny. Don't tell her parents. Don't tell her brothers. Don't tell McGonagall or Snape or Hagrid."

Dumbledore is clearly stunned that he's figured out that McGonagall, Snape and Hagrid are his three confidantes, depending on the content of what is being confided.

It takes a lot of wrangling, and a lot of manipulating. He utilizes his underused emotion manipulating ability, and he capitalizes on the forest and the unicorn incident, and he hints that the centaurs told him a lot more than they did. The centaurs knew _something_, he's sure, based on the way that they reacted to him. But they didn't tell him much of anything. But finally, Dumbledore explains about the prophecy, though he refuses to tell Harry what it actually says and won't bend.

Still, though, that explains a lot.

Dumbledore eventually leaves, horrified that he's even mentioned the prophecy, pained and guilty and trying not to _feel_, because Harry can eavesdrop on him that way. That's why he doesn't want his friends to know—they would try to push their emotions away when he's nearby, and he doesn't want that. He loves his friends' emotions, loves Ron's love of Quidditch, and Hermione's enthusiasm for learning. He loves the way that Neville feels when they assure him that he_ is_ their friend, even if they aren't really close.

Madame Pomfrey lets Ron and Hermione in, and he tells them the whole story and lets their comforting relief and happiness crash over him like a wave.

The leaving feast is peppered with various triumphs—Gryffindor had managed to recover the thirty points that they had been knocked behind, and are firmly (if not too far) in the lead. The emotions of the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws are all triumphant, since Slytherin had won the House Cup for so many years now, and they're happy to see someone else win it.

The Slytherins, on the other hand, are so very, very bitter that it makes Harry's stomach twist. Because he felt that feeling that rolled off of Voldemort, and logically, he knows that everyone here has the same capacity to be twisted by evil. But that dark bitterness is closer to it than anything else. He's looking at Draco across the hall, as his rival, and Draco just feels empty. Disappointed, but mostly empty.

Perhaps the House Cup and the sense of competition that it creates is nothing but a poison, after all.

He boards the train home the next day, trunk behind him and his friends by his side. His feelings are split—on one hand, he's _actually_ been waiting all this time just to see Ginny again. On the other, now he has to go back to the Dursleys for the summer, back to Aunt Petunia's guilt and terror, and Uncle Vernon's fear and Dudley's possessiveness. He'd sent Dudley a few letters throughout the year, knowing that his cousin needed it. His excuse for not being able to send more was that the owls might get noticed.

Finally, though the train arrives at King's Cross, and he's off of it and through the crowd, emotions twining, reaching for Ginny's delicate golden tendrils, unlike anything else that he's ever felt. He skids to a stop in front of her, and she looks up and gives him a brilliant smile along with a blushing red face. He can tell that she's embarrassed because all of her brothers and her mum are watching their greeting, and she knows that they're going to assume that she has a crush on him and tease her about it all summer.

"Hi," he says, smiling goofily.

"Hi," she answers, with equal goofiness and joy. Ron and Hermione, who were both shocked when he took off, finally catch up, and he gets dragged away from Ginny to say goodbye to his friends and greet his relatives. That's okay, though—she's going to Hogwarts next year, and all he really wanted was to feel her again. They can do everything else with letters.

**This story exists as an experiment. I wanted to play around with how Harry might interact with others if he understood how they felt about him, even if he doesn't understand why. With an intrinsic knowledge of people and what makes them tick, how would Harry's actions and interpretations of things change? The events of this chapter didn't change much, but I have **_**very**_** AU plans for the next few chapters. To address his relationship with Ginny—they are both very young. All they know is that there is no one else that can do what they can, and therefore, she is the only person that understands him and vice versa. It is not my intention to create a creepy romantic relationship between a ten year old and an eleven year old, so I hope that I managed to balance that out. Right now they're friends, and they're not yet at the point where they would dream of being anything more. That being said, this story will be Harry/Ginny, but don't worry about it happening too early.**


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